Scars
by verity candor
Summary: Neville mourns someone who is not dead, Luna comforts someone who is not crying, and the sun sets on November 29, 1997.


_Scars_

It was a rather large risk to be out on the grounds unsupervised. Ever since those two second years had tried to escape the grounds, students weren't allowed to leave the castle without a teacher, namely a Carrow, with them.

But then again, it was sort of a special day.

Neville sat at the edge of the Great Lake, swirling his feet in the sun-warmed water. In his hands was a photograph, faded and torn at the bottom left-hand corner. A cheery young couple with their arms around each other smiled at the camera; the man clutching a cup of coffee, the woman with a thick scarf around her neck. On the back were the words _Frank and Alice. Nov. 29, 1979. _

It was eighteen years to the day since that picture had been taken. Neville hugged his robes closer to himself and laid the picture down in front of him.

The shadows under their eyes were clearly visible, and through the grins and the occasional peck his mum gave his dad, he could see the shadows of the war. Their war.

It was true, though, wasn't it? Neville thought. Their war. And this war.

_**Our** war._ He thought, thinking of Ginny and Seamus and Luna and Lavender and Parvati. _Our war._

"If you're looking for a Tricorned Bullfrog, then I should probably warn you that their third horn is poisonous. And they don't show up unless it's the fourth Sunday of the month and a full moon, besides."

"Luna?"

She plopped down next to him, "Hmm, it's a very beautiful afternoon, isn't it?"

Neville shrugged. "I suppose."

She looked at him aslant, her wide, pale eyes steady, and then peered at the photograph, "Oh. Are those your parents?"

Neville nodded.

"I see... I didn't really think you were looking for a Tricorned Bullfrog."

Neville looked down at the smiling photograph again, thinking of the pale, white-haired woman who gaped at him, mouth half-open, and pressed empty gum wrappers into his hand.

He shrugged again.

"Your mother looks very nice."

"I don't know." said Neville. "If she is, I mean."

Luna was silent.

"I never – I never got to know her. Her, or my dad. I mean, ever since I've known them, they've been in the hospital. That's the first thing I remember about them. Seeing them in the hospital. And, so, I – I never got to know them. Not really."

His grandmother talked about them as if they were dead already. Maybe that would have been easier. It was an awful thought, but sometimes Neville wished it were true. If they had been, maybe it would have been easier to love them. If they had been, it would have been easier to –

"I mean, it's not that bad for me, I know that. I'm not Harry, they're not dead, but, still – I still… I just wish…I just wish they weren't so… gone."

But as far as the world was concerned, Frank and Alice Longbottom _were _gone. The bright, happy couple that had been so well-liked was dead. Those wraith-like people in the St. Mungo's ward were ghosts, not even, really, because they breathed. They were from another time, from a period that everyone else had left behind. They were like an unwinding string from a coat, something to be ripped off, hidden. They were a memory, wispy and frail as his mother's white hair, long and spindling like Frank Longbottom's wasted fingers, and they _didn't belong_. People didn't want to remember them. Frank and Alice Longbottom _should_ be dead, like Lily and James Potter. But they weren't.

And because they were alive, because they still existed, there was no way to mourn them. Even when Neville tried, when he brought out this picture, when he tried to lay them to rest, there was no way to do it. Because overlaying this woman's cheerful grin was his mother's gaunt face, and every movement they made reminded him how much they _weren't_ gone.

They _weren't_.

"I just wish I could…fix it."

Luna nodded companionably. "I used to feel the same way about my mother."

"Really?"

"Oh yes. She's dead, you know. She died when I was nine. She was in St. Mungo's for a month first, though. I had rather awful nightmares about it. Daddy would take me every day, and I remember I kept wishing she would get better, but she didn't, really. It makes me very sad sometimes. I still wonder if things would have been very different if she was alive."

"…They probably would have been."

"Yes, I rather think so."

They sat quietly for a while, both staring at the photograph as Neville fiddled with the torn edge.

"Did you know that you look just like your mother?"

"Hmm? Oh. Yes. Yeah."

"You both smile the same way."

More silence.

"In case you're wondering, Neville, it never really gets better. For anyone. You always feel it. It's like… like… a scar. A scar on your heart."

For a second, Harry's face was outlined clearly in his head, that expression of pain and weariness evident upon it, the lightning bolt blindingly sharp on his forehead.

Scars.

Neville pondered that as he smoothed out the wrinkled photograph on his knee, tracing his mother's round, smiling face with his finger.


End file.
